Gadgetory

most of the time we do head to head videos we're comparing smartphones of the same class flagship against flagship mid-range against mid-range and so on that keeps things fair and that tends to be what most people want to see but sometimes the opportunity arises to mix and match a little to bring two devices from separate device classes side by side and see how they stack up that may not be as fair from a specs perspective but it's still useful the buyers because sometimes people need to know whether they should consider switching categories if the questions I've been getting on Twitter or any indication that's definitely the case here Android smartphone shoppers want to know whether they should stick with Samsung's flagship smartphone offering the galaxy s3 or take the leap into phablet territory with the new Galaxy Note 2 so let's take a tour do some benchmarks and see how these two super phones stack up I'm Michael Fisher this is PocketNow and this is the Samsung Galaxy s3 versus the samsung galaxy note 2 sitting side-by-side two things are very clear about these devices they're very obviously from the same manufacturer and they're clearly in different categories due to their size the galaxy s3 often feels like it gets close to tablet territory itself with its big 4.8 inch display the largest panel in smartphones but it doesn't even come close to the massive screen on the 5.5 inch galaxy note 2 they're both Super AMOLED displays covered by a Gorilla Glass 2 but they feature the same 1280 by 720 resolution resulting in a higher pixel density on the galaxy s3 306 PPI versus the note 2 at about 267 PPI now as far as colors go setting both screens to half brightness reveals they seem pretty close to on par here occasionally the note 2 screen looks a little warmer to me with maybe a touch more saturation but it's so minor my eyes might be playing tricks on me also I should note here that I've set the screen mode on the galaxy note 2 here to standard not the oversaturated dynamic I prefer for everyday use I don't have a screen mode option on my American galaxy s3 here not because it's a galaxy s3 but because it is a US carrier variant we'll touch on that again in the software section but to wrap up the display discussion these screens are very very very similar pixel density enthusiasts won't like the note twos lower PPI rating but it doesn't bother me at all day to day from an external hardware perspective Samsung's made a big effort to unify its design philosophy with these two phones they're very obviously close siblings right down to this glossy slippery skin oil magnet that Samsung calls its hyper glaze coating you can see it's already I'm wiping these off every two seconds and they're both just getting smudged up like crazy so no advantage on either one there they're both the fingerprint magnets the note 2 is quite a bit heavier in the hand it's 183 grams versus the Galaxy s3 is 133 grams and it's also thicker nine point four millimeters versus 8.6 but that doesn't ruin the experience in my use it actually made the note to feel a bit more premium and that's a feeling that's also helped along by the Galaxy Note 2's thicker battery door the lack of a visible seam on the silver bezel and at least on our review unit a clicky er more responsive home button now that comes at the slight cost of ergonomics the sgs3 is definitely the prettier of the two in our opinion with its rounded Riverstone design though the note 2 is more streamlined than its predecessor it still got a pretty blocky design when compared with the galaxy s3 otherwise the only visible difference comes on the back where Samsung has moved the speakerphone from the top to the bottom of the device there's the same 8 megapixel 1080p camera around back here and the same 1.9 megapixel camera up front even minor components like the earpiece grille seemed to be recycled between these two devices and obviously you can see the LEDs flashing away on both always nice to see notification lights on modern devices kudos to Samsung for continuing that trend finally wrapping up the hardware tour that's worth cracking open the battery door here to have a look at what's powering these devices the differences in power source are visually very very apparent with the note twos 3100 milliamp hour battery dwarfing the galaxy s3 is 2100 milliamp hour pack now that's the look and feel let's talk guts and software as I mentioned before this is the US version of the galaxy s3 so it makes it a little bit tricky to compare with the galaxy note 2 and its international specs but not too tricky most notably the galaxy note 2 is powered by an EXO notes 4412 quad CPU that's the same as most international versions of the galaxy s3 except running at 1.6 instead of 1.4 gigahertz but it's not the same as we've got in this verizon galaxy s3 which is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon s4 dual-core CPU now we've had some lengthy discussions and articles at pocket now describing the differences in processor architecture between these SOC s so we won't go into it too deeply here but the X note squad and the European Galaxy Note 2 here is the same CPU that will come in the US version and there's also two gigs of RAM in each of these devices so it is a relevant comparison if you're an American shopper they're not running the same software though like many Americans I'm still stuck at Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich on this galaxy s3 waiting for a carrier approval of the jellybean update however the note 2 is shipping with android 4.1.1 jelly bean the newer software with TouchWiz running on top of course has brought the usual jelly bean improvements we've got improved notifications right here we've also got Google now running down in multitasking view there that is and of course the increased fluidity promised by jelly beans project butter improvements but honestly TouchWiz on ICS on the galaxy s3 runs so well that I haven't noticed much improvement in UI fluidity maybe it's just that the bigger screen shows flaws more readily when they're there but in any case like the screen color question the UI performance is almost identical between these two devices will be listing the full array of benchmark scores in our full review and we'll put them in chart form so you can compare them easily across devices but in the meantime just know that the Galaxy Note 2 scored 13 590 and on to 254 39 in quadrants standard and Linpack single-thread 63.8 Linpack multi-thread 92.3 19 and smart bench 2012 4994 those scores beat out those of our US and international galaxy s3s handily so how does that performance translate to real-world use well this is the boring part to some and the exciting part to others whatever the case it wouldn't be a comparison video without a boot time test and a launch off so in the real world you want your phone to start quickly and you want apps to launch quickly so let's boot first power button is on the right on both these devices 1 2 3 boom there's a Galaxy Note verizon version takes another second you have to hold the button actually longer on that version that is always interesting to see when a carrier or a manufacturer makes that decision to change that timing and why now we're going to sit through some carrier splash screen on the left obviously whereas the unlocked version on the right is obviously going to boot more quickly also these devices are not fresh out of the box the one on the left has been my daily driver for quite a while so it's got a few more apps than the note 2 but the note 2 have been testing pretty aggressively for the past few days and it is loaded up with apps as well so obviously not a scientific test but also very nice and there's the US version also very nice too to use some phones that have actually had some use put on them and are not still in a factory fresh condition which also doesn't tell us much so we don't feel too badly about that now app launch speeds are also important now some are more important than others we've kind of gone through the boot sequence here we're connected to a Wi-Fi network on each side that's nice let's go ahead and launch the camera most important you don't want a lot loulou's any shots sorry about the glare here 1 2 3 boom almost immediate launch on almost an identical launch time rather on each one the Galaxy Note 2 still in tips mode still giving me some some advise I haven't disabled these yet because I'd like to be reminded of the new features in the camera which we'll talk about a little bit later let's pop open our email if we can 1 2 3 boom stock email app boom very very very similar launch times let's pop open the dialer got to make phone calls even in this day and age 1 2 3 boom very nice and let's not go ahead and open the stock browser we're not going to do Chrome even though that's becoming the stock browser on many Android devices go ahead and find us the internet browser itself 1 2 3 boom this is Samsung's stock browser this one for some reason loading into XDA I guess I was over there yes a webOS story now while we have the browser's in our mind right now we're going to go ahead and load pocketnow.com just to see load times of course we're using the same Wi-Fi hotspots we're competing for bandwidth not a scientific check once again we're just interested in how the browser's load the page speedily or not one two three boom this is not a race we're just seeing how the full version of pocketnow.com loads the Galaxy Note 2 decidedly ahead here it's just doing a little bit of scrolling while the page is loading some gaps in the page showing up on each now the galaxy s3 is indicating done before the Galaxy Note 2 which is still actually loading up here if you can check and now it is done as well alright so a couple seconds of disparity there not really anything to write home about let's do the double tap to zoom check I don't know why we're getting this brightness difference here all of a sudden sorry about that that is not a reflection of the screen that is a setting change that may have happened in between takes here I will fix that anyway scrolling performance is looking pretty nice here let's get them decked back down here we'll fight the glare for a second do a little bit of this very very nice very nice and fluid on each browser the page is being rear-ended in more with more than acceptable speed scroll test there double tap for a column zoom pretty responsive the note doing a more intelligent column zoom I think but minor differences really really excellent browser performance from both of these devices finally why don't we go ahead and hop into a third-party app here I'm no gamer but occasionally I do like to fly around so let's make that Air Wing tap on the same we should have comparable launch times here and I don't think I remembered to trim this of course I didn't so the note to everyone settle down yes yes yes we like rock music the note to launching just to maybe a second faster there to a new game Trinity mission carried a landing yes I will go ahead and perform that carrier landing f-18 Hornet sounds great to me I'll do it over here while we're waiting for that to load we'll do it in the galaxy s3 as well continue f-18 Hornet sounds excellent to me select aircraft loads the mission comparable times here there we go game isn't this game isn't actually formatted properly for either of these screens it is it does do a little bit of stretching here and there we have accelerometer based yes yes yes yes yes thank you for the tutorial please skip it and you can tell here maybe you can't graphic performance just just just fine with this very low impact game this is just to show the devices are equally competent on average entertainment apps I suppose I could just as easily open Angry Birds and show you that obviously the quad-core powerhouse inside the note 2 is a real beast here we'll have to evaluate its true gaming performance in another venue one thing to note though as this applies to media as well the note 2's speakerphone considerably louder than the galaxy s3 and BAE's here maybe I let this rattle now I'm gonna crap anyway there we go while we're on the subject of graphics we haven't had time to fully evaluate the note two's camera yet but it definitely seems on par with the Galaxy s3 is which makes sense considering that it looks like it could be the same model the software though has undergone some tweaks you can see that burst shot no longer requires selecting a special mode you just hold down the shutter button and you have extra shooting modes available here as well compared to the sgs3 at least the American version here with best photo and best faces showing up those options not available in the sgs3 but we wouldn't be surprised to see them eventually pop up when jellybean arrives to America's Shores finally and very quickly we would be remiss not to point out the note 2's other huge differentiator the s-pen it's not your grandfather's stylus and the amount of added functionality it brings is rather extreme whether you find that added functionality useful or not is another question one you can answer by watching our s-pen lesson video from last week but it's definitely a point in the note twos camp so after our first hands-on with the Galaxy Note 2 at Aoife in Berlin a lot of internet commenters were saying the same thing we were thinking the note 2 is a lot more similar to the Galaxy S 3 then the original note was to the Galaxy S 2 samsung has really pulled no punches in trying to convey the message that these two devices are not just in the same family but are actually very very close siblings so that might be a push toward making the phablet form-factor more of a mainstream concept and if so it's easy to hazard a guess that it might work in this case because s-pen aside the note 2 is very very much a blown-up Galaxy s3 and that's a good thing as far as we can tell so far thanks for watching everybody this has been Michael with pokken out be sure and stay tuned for our full review of the Galaxy Note 2 later in the week there also be a lot of feature articles and in-depth videos leading up to that review and following that review so keep it locked to pocketnow.com for that leave us a comment at pocketnow.com if you have something to say if you want to follow us on Twitter you should do that pocket now tweets is the twitter account name you want to follow me do it at your own risk at captain 2 phones really though thank you very much for watching throw us a like if you liked the video we'll look forward to bringing you more a Galaxy Note 2 coverage and every kind of mobile coverage in the days weeks months and years ahead thanks again for watching see you next time